Dharshini Ramesh Babu

ARtefact: An Augmented Reality Experience for Museum Artefact Engagement

Most museum artefacts are shown behind glass with a small label next to them, a few lines of text and nothing more. It can tell you when something was made, but it can't show you detail up close, or let you look at it from an angle the case doesn't allow. ARtefact is a mobile app built to fix that. Point your phone at a printed image next to the display, and a 3D model of the artefact appears in the space in front of you, so you can rotate it, zoom in, and actually explore it instead of just reading about it.

Three artefacts from the Hunt Museum in Limerick were scanned to build the models in the app, using a technique that turns a set of photos into a 3D model. Each model has small markers placed on specific parts of it, like a carved detail or a repaired section. Tap one, and it tells you what makes that spot worth noticing. Instead of one long block of text, the artefact's story is broken into small pieces, each tied to the exact part of the object you're looking at.

ARtefact was built and tested, and what came back mattered as much as what was planned. People noticed detail in the objects they said they'd have missed otherwise, which was the whole point. Some parts of the interface confused people at first, so those parts were reworked. ARtefact explores whether a museum object can be looked at more closely, without ever taking it out of its case.